How to update routerOS without sufficient space?

RouterOS General
1

I have a CRS3xx series with SFP+ and a dual core ARM. after a long time i can finally use it again, but now im trying to update from 6.3something to the latest and i find that there isnt enough space to upload the bare system package with only 16MB of flash, of which 12MB is already used (files are empty). My last mikrotik hEX got bricked when i tried to update routerOS on it. Why is mikrotik designing devices with so little space that it bricks when you update it?

I do not want to risk updating the hardware without sufficient space and end up bricking it as its not as cheap as the hEX 3

2

Normally this is not an issue because your upload is not to the flash but to the RAMdisk. Only when your RAM is full it would be problematic, as can happen with some “mini” and “lite” models.

Anyway, what you could do now is:

  • make backup and export, download the files to an external computer
  • re-install the device using netinstall with format
  • upload the backup and try to restore it, when this is not possible upload the export and do a reset-to-defaults with load of that export file.